Colours! Jars! Sunshine!

I have some exciting new colours to post up tomorrow! Unfortunately daylight ran out before I had a chance to take photos, so we will have to be patient. They're looking really lovely together, and it seems 'sun-dyeing' is pretty effective when using cold dyes (except I suppose they wouldn't be that cold)!

I made up ten jars of dye for my assessment which was on Monday, and just took the wool out of the jars today. Three of them had mould growing which was pretty grim, but I put them through a quick wash in the washing machine (without soap) and they've fared pretty well so I'll show photos of them tomorrow too. Colours coming up are from jars of:

• Black beans
• Madder
• Plum (mouldy)
• Turmeric
• Beetroot
• Avocado (mouldy)
• Annatto seeds
• Tinned prunes (mouldy)
• Onion
• Mixed berries

Some of the colours are really great! 

This plus some other work I had on display in the sun has taught me which dyes fade the most (the majority were actually ok, but they were only out for a week), so I can do another post on that. It might come in useful :)

- Kate 

Beetroot Adventures

For my birthday, my friend Holly bought me some lovely springform cake tins, one of which is the shape of a heart, so I decided to make a cake. When I came to making icing, I realised I didn't have any food colouring, and since I'd made the simplest, most basic cake on Earth, I really wanted it to be a bit more interesting!

I had a bit of a search through the cupboards and the fridge, and found some beetroot at the back of the fridge. I hate beetroot (for a vegetarian I'm not a massive fan of most vegetables unfortunately), but I had bought it to dye wool with. You may have seen what happened the last time I tried to dye wool with beetroot, but here's a photo:

I've grown to like it, but it wasn't quite what I was after! 

Anyway, back to food colouring. I didn't have any, and I wanted some! So I used the juice from the packet (I didn't want to use too much in case I ended up with beetroot-flavoured icing) to make baby pink icing. Here's the result:

So if you'd like to avoid food colouring for whatever reason, here's the recipe I used/made up:

Ingredients

175g of icing sugar

70g of softened butter

2 tsp vanilla essence

1 tsp lemon juice

A splash of milk

3 tbsp beetroot juice

Basically it's buttercream icing with a couple of extras. I used the vanilla essence and lemon juice to make sure there was no beetroot flavour and it seems to have worked quite nicely. Now I want to try other colours! I bet turmeric would make a crazy bright yellow. Maybe spinach might be worth a try too.

Then, remembering the failed wool dyeing, I decided to try cold-dyeing some wool in beetroot juice. I mushed up 3 beetroots (I bought the pre-cooked ones) and strained out the bits. Then I poured in a random amount of white vinegar (about the same amount of liquid I already had) and put a 100g skein of unmordanted wool in. 

I don't have any pre-mordanted wool at the moment because I haven't got round to it, so that's why I added the white vinegar to the dye instead. I don't know if it made any difference, but after just 2 hours I ran the skein under the tap and no dye came out! Here's the wet wool after I rinsed it. It will probably be a bit lighter once dry, but the colour looks great!

That white patch is kind of infuriating though...

- Kate

Vegetable Dyes Mordanted with Alum

Onion peel is great fun. You do not need 100g per 100g of yarn though! Even the peel from 1 or 2 onions will give quite a deep colour. As you can see, red onions give a browner colour, whereas normal onions give a more golden colour. 

I have also tried cold dyeing with onion peel (below).

This definitely needs an attempt 2! I think a deeper colour (possibly more yellow than green) might be the result of a cold dyebath.

Compared to the amazing colour of the dyebath, these colours were quite disappointing! The dye looks amazing, it's a vibrant purple/blue colour, but just doesn't seem to stick to the yarn very well. 

Does this count as a vegetable? I'm not sure but it had to go somewhere! My boyfriend bought me a bunch of roses (aw) and I didn't want to throw them away when they died so I made a dye. Each dyebath used the heads of 6 roses. I won't bother with a hot dyebath again, because the colour is so similar to the brown from red onion peel, but the colour from the cold dyebath is quite a sweet lavender purple so if I'm lucky enough to get more roses (hint hint) I may do it again.

Thanks for reading!

- Kate

Fruit Dyes Mordanted with Alum

Here are some photos from my dye book showing the fruit dyes I have made:

Skin of one passion cut off and simmered for 1 hour, then 25g of wool simmered for one hour. This is a beautiful soft green and I can't wait to try it again. This is NOT from an orange passion fruit, just the usual purpley coloured ones.

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These blackcurrants were from my pack of frozen 'black forest fruits', I used as many as I could find and didn't weigh them but I suspect it was about 75-100g to just two 25g skeins of wool. I simmered these straight from frozen so had to use a potato masher to squish them in the pan. These were my first bright/deep colours and I love them. The second more purple colour uses the same dyebath, but after the first skein had taken most of the bright colour. I think it's quite interesting as you wouldn't have guessed they were from the same dye! Let me know if you are interested in variegated wool and I will make a photo tutorial :)

I used 50g of red grapes to dye these skeins. It doesn't show well in the photo but the dipped parts of the second skein are a lovely pale blue.

I used a different wool here and I think it is more susceptible to dye. Unfortunately it costs a lot more so I haven't done very many experiments with it!

I used four avocados for this, I think I got a bit carried away! Both skeins were only 25g. The second time I dyed using the avocado pits (below) the colour was completely different, so I think I might have burnt the dye! I would advise cold dyeing with avocado, it seems to be a bit more reliable.

Love this one! The writing says: 

"1 - Simmered with turmeric for 10 minutes (a), then simmered in blackcurrant for 1 hour.

2 - Turmeric and blackcurrant in same dye bath, simmered for 1 hour."

Thanks for reading!

Dyes I Have Made With Salt or Vinegar Mordants

I prefer alum as a mordant as it has given me more consistently 'exciting' results. By exciting I mean that the wool has taken the dye well and the colours tend to be deep shades of whichever colour.Salt and vinegar still have their place though, since they can both be bought easily at the supermarket, and there are still nice colours to be had.

Here are some of my results:

I thought that I had done something wrong with this one, but according to various places on the internet, beetroot just doesn't dye wool pink like you would think it does!

The second, brighter colour is wool mordanted with alum. I think with turmeric it doesn't make too much difference which mordant (if any) is used as it stains so easily.

There is a slight tint to this one, but nothing special. When I first dyed it it looked more orangey because the little bits of pepper were stuck to the yarn. I wouldn't have bothered with it at all but my housemates were convinced it would work! 

Here are the salt mordanted dyes:

The salt mordanted skein is actually a rather beautiful grey but I can't seem to capture it in a photograph...

As you can see, these colours are quite dull and similar to each other. I'm sure more exciting results can be achieved but I got my alum delivered and have used that for everything ever since!

-Kate

Look What I Bought Today!

This beauty is a Werra camera, I believe made in Germany in the 40s or 50s. I bought it from the bookshop that I volunteer for so I still need to do some research. I think I know how to use it up to a point, it's making all the right clicky noises and the shutter is opening and closing so I think it's working! We'll have to see when I get the first film back.

I also bought a Canon (EOS 300) SLR yesterday, I'll post some photos up of that soon. It's nowhere near as pretty but I think much more functional. It helps that it's not as old (possibly 90s?) so looks very similar to a modern DSLR.

This sticker on the top looks a bit manky...I'm not sure whether to remove it or not because I think it's interesting. But since the writing is mostly illegible I think I'll probably clean it off.

The part of the case which covers the lense is a bit kaput too, but I think I can probably glue it back together easily enough.

-Kate

Dyestuffs I Have Used

Cassava
Black Forest Fruits (frozen cherries, blackcurrants and blackberries from the supermarket)
Blueberries
Strawberries
Raspberries
Beetroot (sorry, it doesn't make pink)
Turmeric
Cayenne pepper (doesn't work, don't bother)
Spinach
Red grapes (better as a cold dye)
Blackcurrants
Carrots (disappointing)
Passion fruit
Cherries
Red onion peel
Butternut squash (not much going on there)
Grass (once again, not much)
Blackberries
Yellow onion peel
Turmeric & blackcurrant mixed
Avocado (pits and skins)
Red cabbage
Rose petals (better as a cold dye)
Black beans (also known as black turtle beans)
Plum
Mushroom
Aubergine
Annatto seeds
Madder root